Abstract:In order to build and maintain social capital in their Online Social Networks, users need to disclose personal information, a behavior that at the same time leads to a lower level of privacy. In this conceptual paper, we offer a new theoretical perspective on the question of why people might regulate their privacy boundaries inadequately when communicating in Online Social Networks. We argue that people have developed a subjective theory about online privacy putting them into a processing mode of default trust. In this trusting mode people would (a) discount the risk of a self-disclosure directly; and (b) infer the risk from invalid cues which would then reinforce their trusting mode. As a consequence people might be more willing to self-disclose information than their actual privacy preferences would otherwise indicate. We exemplify the biasing potential of a trusting mode for memory and metacognitive accuracy and discuss the role of a default trust mode for the development of social capital.
In an increasingly interconnected world, many people handle large parts of their communication online, often via social networking sites (SNS). In contrast to face-to-face communication, messages on SNS are accessible by potentially unknown and large audiences. However, it is an open question what users actually perceive as a large audience, or else as many people in SNS contexts. Exploring this question from a psycholinguistic perspective, we investigated the meaning of vague quantifiers such as “few” or “many” with regard to audiences in different contexts in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants assigned numbers to quantifiers describing audiences in online versus offline and private versus public contexts. In Experiment 2, including the same items as Experiment 1, participants rated the appropriateness of specific numbers of people that were described by a quantifier. Our results show, for example, that people assigned larger numbers to quantifiers for online than for offline contexts. This was also true when access to the information was supposed to be restricted which implies a (scalar) change of privacy expectations.
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